Taking Off
by Max Brown
Summary: What happened in the fourteen years of Max's life before the first Maximum Ride book started? Max's POV. FAX, if you squint for it.
1. Earliest Memory

**Disclaimer: Not mine. JP's.**

**Please read and review! Flames are welcome. Invited, actually. Criticism helps. So just tell me what you honestly think of it - that's what helps the most. Thanks for reading!! And by the way, this is Max's POV. At The School. In case you couldn't tell. **

Ch. 1 – Earliest Memory

I wasn't really able to process everything that was going on at two years old, but I was able to get the gist of it.

And it wasn't good.

All I knew was that for as long as I could remember, I had been stuck inside some sort of cage with two other...experiments like me. People in white coats would often come by to do painful procedures on me, and sometimes they would take one of the two other boys away for periods of time.

The boy with dark hair didn't speak much. None of us did, but he made less noise than anyone else. He didn't ever show pain, and as a result of his stoicism, he didn't really show any emotion at all. He rarely smiled. I liked him, though. I liked his hair. And his eyes. They were both dark. As were his wings. It was nice to have some dark. The walls, our clothes, everything, it seemed, was white. White can get dreary after a while. I liked the contrast of his dark hair and eyes and wings. It helped balance everything out for me. Like we were breaking the pattern of the people in white coats. Succeeding in defying them.

The other boy had very light blond hair and blue eyes. He moved around more, but he would bump into things a lot. He mumbled a lot about heat and loud noises. He was nice enough, but I had less to do with him. Which was still a lot. I mean, you're going to know a person pretty well if you've been stuck in a cage with them all your life.

I also saw other people in cages around us. They weren't like us – we had wings on our backs, though we had never gotten to use them. They weren't like us, but they weren't like the people running the tests on us either. Some had weirdly shaped heads, or scales, or extra arms and stuff. I wasn't able to become familiar with any one of them, though, because all of them stopped moving after a while, and the people in white coats would come take them away.

I had no idea what this meant.

I would get bored a lot. You see, strange as it seems, there really aren't that many fun ways to kill time when you're stuck in a dog crate. Especially when there's not anything you're waiting for after the time passes.

I knew that I didn't like the people in white coats. I would always try to fight against them.

Which didn't always turn out too well for me.

But I wasn't going to give up anytime soon. So when I saw the door open and a whitecoat walk through, it was just business as usual.

"Come here, honey," he said, heading for our cage. I glared at him with all the ferocity a two-year-old mutant kid could muster.

He opened the latch on the cage and reached in for me. I struggled against him, but he won. No thanks to my cage-mates. I shot a look of reproach at one of them. The one with the dark hair. He didn't smile, but he looked unrepentant.

The man holding me forced on a baggy sweatshirt and proceeded to walk down a maze of corridors and hallways and elevators. I didn't like those – they made me uncomfortable. We moved all weirdly in them.

Finally, we arrived at a place I'd never seen before. There were two big, glass doors and a counter with a woman behind it. The walls were white – the same white that I'd grown accustomed to seeing everywhere.

But this was not what surprised me.

What surprised me was what I saw through the glass doors.

I saw green. I saw people who looked like the whitecoats, walking around with seemingly carefree expressions. I saw trees and flowers and the sky. The sky. The vast, blue, empty basin above called to me with all my heart. My whole being yearned toward it, though I hardly knew what it was.

I had fought against all the uncomfortable tests and unkind whitecoats back in the cage, but I hadn't rebelled against our treatment. None of us had. It had never occurred to us there was anything beyond the drab white walls and metal bars of the cages.

And then we were outside.

Suddenly, my marveling at its beauty was replaced by cold, intense fear. The fresh air cut at my face like a whip.

I had absolutely no idea what this place was. I didn't know what could happen here. I didn't get scared easily, but here I could feel myself shaking in the whitecoat's arms.

"You see, Maximum," he began gently – gently for a whitecoat, anyway. "This is what it's like on the outside. This is what the world really looks like."

I stared at him, deeply confused. Why was this guy showing me this? I couldn't speak English perfectly, but I could speak it well enough to understand what he was saying. His tenderness disturbed me – it made me feel unprotected. Vulnerable. Like he was hiding something and it would be that much worse later.

"Maximum – that's your name, by the way," he continued. "Maximum. Because you're the best there is. You're limitless."

He just stood there for a while, and I started to adjust to the different air. It felt...somehow cleaner. Less filtered.

I liked it.

I couldn't help but notice everybody's face out here. Nobody looked upset, or cruel, or in pain. Everyone looked...happy, somehow. At ease with the world. Like I had never felt.

"Jeb, what are you-" a heard a voice say angrily from behind us. Then the whitecoat stopped when he saw me in the guy's arms. Then he threw him an understanding-yet-exasperated look.

Jeb, as apparently his name was, just shrugged sheepishly.

"You should probably bring it back inside before anyone else finds out." His voice was softer now.

"Yeah." Jeb's voice sounded sad. "Yeah, I will."

Slowly, Jeb turned around and headed back for the building. I didn't want to go back. I liked it outside.

He walked back through the doors and into a room that I recognized as one where they did the tests on me. I frowned and struggled harder against him.

Jeb lay me down on the table and brought out a weird mask thing which he put in front of my face.

"I'm sorry," I heard him say quietly, before everything went dark.

That was my earliest memory.


	2. Speaking

**Disclaimer: Not mine. JP's.**

**Please read and review! Thanks!! And kudos to everyone who reviewed to Chapter One - you guys rock. So without further ado, the chapter. Voila.**

Ch. 2 – Speaking

A little while after I went outside for the first time – I can't say exactly how long, it's impossible to keep track of time in that place – we had a new addition to our cage.

She was tiny, comparatively, and her skin looked different than ours. Hers was more brownish. I liked it, though. It felt – warm, somehow. Her eyes and wings were also brown. The girl didn't have much hair yet, but there was a little frizzy brown fuzz on top of her head. For some reason, I felt instinctively protective of her.

As much as I liked her, she had habits I would probably prefer not to be around twenty-four seven, if I had a choice.

From the first moment we saw her – when the whitecoats were bringing her in – she was making noise. Lots of it. And we couldn't find an off switch.

She was always making sounds, always testing out different ways to make noise. And coming up with a surprisingly wide range of them. I'd never known one person could make so much noise in such a small period of time. Up until then.

The other two boys seemed wary of the girl, so I tried to sit with her and play with her as much as possible. Make her feel welcome. Despite the constant chatter.

I have to say, though, she may have been a good thing for all of us. None of us – me and the two other boys – had ever spoken. We'd make noises of pain, sounds of sympathy, indications of what we were feeling at the time. But never words. I understood what a lot of them meant, but I'd never tried to actually form them myself. So I took it upon myself to do just that.

What had the whitecoat called Jeb said my name was? I could remember how it sounded in his voice, in my head. Now I just had to figure recreate it.

"Mac – M – Maximum. Maximum." It wasn't perfect, but it was close enough. I glowed with pride.

The boy with dark hair sent me a questioning look, the blond one looked vaguely interested, and the new girl didn't seem to have noticed.

"Maximum. Maximum. Maaaaaaximum. Me. I'm Maximum." I was getting good at this. I smiled with intense satisfaction.

"Maximum," said the dark-haired boy. I looked at him, surprised. It was his first word. I liked the sound of it in his voice.

I walked over across the cage to plop down next to him. I looked up at him and smiled, brighter than I had in a long time. He surprised me further by doing something I didn't remember him ever doing. He smiled back at me. Everything around us seemed brighter.

"Yeah. Me. Maximum," I replied. He seemed to understand.

"Maximum. Maximum. Hi." He struggled to form the last word, but managed fine.

"Hi," I said, giggling shyly. I was in a pretty giddy mood, for me anyway. I put my head on his shoulder.

"Hi. Me. Max. Yeah," repeated the new girl.

"No. I'm Maximum. Me," I told her, frowning slightly.

"No. I'm Max. Me. Yeah," said the girl happily and uncomprehendingly. I smiled, realizing she didn't have any idea about what she was saying meant. It was cute.

"The...man said. I'm Maximum. Outside. There was...blue. Up," I told the other two boys, gesticulating to help explain what I was saying. "And colors. And...people. It was pretty." I was aware that this wasn't a very good description of what I was trying to say, but it was difficult to articulate the wordless thoughts in my mind.

"Colors," said the other boy, the blond one. "I like colors." He smiled goofily and looked around.

The dark boy looked at me like I'd just confessed to a murder.

The new girl was apparently fascinated by – and delighted with – her hand.

I looked around the cage at the other three kids in it, at their oblivious faces. I knew one thing for sure: I wasn't going to stay here forever. Someday I would go away to the other place. And I would take the other three kids in the cage with me.


	3. United

**Disclaimer: Not mine. JP's.**

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Ch. 3 – United

The next day they came for the girl.

I knew the procedure; I had seen it and done it countless times. The whitecoats came with a smaller cage, took one of us, and put us in it. Then they walked through a maze of a path until they reached one particular door. Once inside, they would either make you go to sleep, or stick needles in you, or make you run and run and run until you collapsed. And then make you run more. Something unpleasant, anyway, to say the least.

Of course, every time they reached for me I would kick and scream and make it as unpleasant for them as I could. As the others would do when the whitecoats came for them.

But this time was different. Something snapped inside of me. The girl looked so confused and so vulnerable and so...innocent.

Two large, gloved hands reached into the cage, and I was filled with a sudden, burning rage. Without thinking twice about what I was doing, I jumped in front of the girl, crossing my arms defiantly.

"No," I told the whitecoat. He looked surprised. So did my other cagemates.

The man grunted and elbowed me out of the way, knocking me over into the blond boy. I jumped back up and threw myself at the man, digging my fingernails into his arm.

"What the- get off me!" he yelled. I just sunk my nails in deeper. My tiny fist beat at his other arm, his hands.

Suddenly, I felt something hard come in contact with the side of my face, and a split second later I felt a stinging, burning pain there. I cried out, but then stopped myself from showing any more weakness.

"I'm not taking _you_, you little, insufferable, OW!" I sunk my teeth into his arm as hard as I could, ignoring the disgusting taste. I could see the two boys' bewildered looks out of the corner of my eye. I strained my jaws to close as much as they could.

In the next instant I felt myself flying through the air for a second, then I could distantly feel my head hitting the hard, metal bars of the cage. Then I was swallowed by the darkness.

I didn't know how much longer it was when I woke up. It could have been hours, and then again, it could have been just seconds. There's really no way to tell in that place.

I was propped up against the side of the cage. The dark-haired boy was next to me. I was aware of a dull ache on the side of my head, and I groaned before I could stop myself. Then I felt a biting sting on my face. I tentatively raised a hand to touch my cheek. When I took my hand away, I could see blood on it.

I then became conscious that the two boys were staring at me, looking very confused and staggered.

The blond one came up and started cleaning off my cheek with his shirt.

"You...okay?" he asked me. I smiled at him.

"Yeah."

"Okay."

"We need to...fight. For each other," I told them both urgently.

"Why?" asked the dark one.

"We need to...leave. Go out. Escape," I told him. He didn't look completely convinced, but he didn't argue with me. I left it at that, for then anyway.

Later, the girl came back. She was asleep. Or unconscious. There was really no way to tell. She was covered in sweat.

The whitecoat carrying her reached in for me. I glared at him, backing away. His arms reached in for me, and he stuck his face into the cage to get a better idea of where I was.

Big mistake.

After a moment's hesitation, the dark haired boy launched a kick, his foot smashing into the whitecoat's face.

The whitecoat roared in pain and pulled back instantly, and I smiled my approval and gratitude at the boy. He didn't smile back at me, but I saw his acknowledgement in his face.

The man took a swing at the dark-haired boy, but I latched myself onto his arm, digging my nails into his skin. He shook me off, and I think my foot accidentally kicked the boy, but not hard enough to do any damage.

The blond one grabbed the whitecoat's other hand, held it up to his face, and bit into it, hard.

The man yelped and drew back again. With one hand up to his nose, he quickly slammed the door of our cage and walked over to the phone hanging on the wall. He muttered something indiscernible into it.

I was practically glowing with satisfaction. I smiled around at the two boys, who smiled back at me. We were all a bit scratched up, but that didn't matter at the moment. What mattered was that we had beaten the whitecoat. We had won.

A moment later, two more whitecoats walked through the door. One I recognized as Jeb, from before.

With three whitecoats, we were easily defeated. But I didn't really care.

As my other cage was wheeled off to the testing room, as I had needles stuck in me, as I thought I would collapse as I scurried around and around the obstacle course, getting shocked each time I made a mistake, I wasn't able to feel completely unhappy.

Inside, I had a shard of some unrecognizable feeling, knowing we had taken the first step to escape.

Only later was I able to identify that feeling as hope.


	4. AN

_**I'm sorry, **_**I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I know. False alarm.**

**I just wanted to let you guys who actually read this that I'm going to be in Hawaii for the next week and a half, so I won't be updating. Just so you don't think I'm neglecting the story or ending it here or something, 'cause I'm not. I'm just sunbathing and zip lining and drinking yummy exotic fruity drinks.**


	5. Separated

**Disclaimer: Not mine. JP's.**

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**Please read and review! Thanks!!**

**And I KNOW it's been forever since I've updated. Sorry about that. I've just been so BUSY - school, vacations. School. Yeah, we've been pretty busy this year so far. But anyway, I've kind of had stuff to do after school every day. But I'm back now. And thank you to everyone who's reviewed, you guys are awesome! And remember, criticism is really, really, _really _helpful. So it's good. Appreciated. However you want to say it. But anyway, here's the chapter.**

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Ch. 4 – Separated

I couldn't tell whether I was imagining it or not, but it felt to me like something totally unexpected was happening.

It seemed like things were actually getting a little better.

The three of us talked more and more each day, and we made up our own words for things we didn't know how to say. We even made up words that only we could understand, in case we didn't want the whitecoats to understand us.

There was a constant stream of babble from the baby, but I could tell she was listening to us. After a few weeks, she even seemed to understand us a tiny, tiny bit.

She wasn't the only one who got smarter.

It was too good to last. Of course it was. I knew that.

The whitecoats saw how we were working together. Against them. I don't even know why they let it go on as long as they did. Maybe they wanted to _observe _us, or something. Maybe they found it interesting to try to analyze how our brains were working. Which were probably relatively normal, compared to _their _sick, twisted minds.

Anyway, though, they saw how it was getting harder and harder for them to take one of us to the testing room, even with the help of the heavy-duty rubber gloves they'd all started wearing.

So one day, after a series of long, exhausting tests which involved being dangled by my ankles over a pit of boiling water while the whitecoats stuck tubes in me to measure my body's reaction, I found myself being dumped into a much smaller, empty cage.

I was too hot and sticky and sweaty and tired to make much of it at the time. When I woke up, though (without knowing I'd ever fallen asleep in the first place), I actually looked around, outside my cage. I quickly realized that I was in the same room as before, but in a different spot. I'd never seen the room from a different perspective.

And the other thing I immediately noticed was that the dark-haired one, the blond one, and the baby weren't there. My head swiveled back and forth frantically, searching for them across the room. I started thoroughly searching every cage: _a person with a duck bill and a tail, some crocodile-dog combination, a tiny elephant with orange-tinted skin..._

"Max?"

A voice. The dark-haired one's voice. It came from somewhere near me, and I whirled at the sound.

He was in the cage directly next to mine, but the view was kind of obstructed by the side of the cages. Now that I looked closer, I could see him. I walked to the side of my cage – it was more of a slight step, though, because the cage was so small – and put my hands on the side of the cage to get as close to him as I could. His hands were on the bars of his cage, too, and our fingertips brushed.

"Max," he breathed.

"Yeah."

He didn't say anything else, and I could see the lines of pain and worry etched across his face.

"It's okay," I told him. "It's gonna be okay."

He just stared at me for a long moment, then slumped against the back of his cage. I just stayed against my cage, drained of the energy and determination to move. I don't know how long I stayed frozen there, I don't know what expression was on my face.

The one thing I had always been able to rely on, the one anchor that held me in any way to the surface of this world, had just been taken from me. I was separated from my friends. We could still talk, but I could barely see them, let alone feel them or comfort them. I didn't even know where the other two were, at the moment. I assumed they were somewhere, though.

Finally I gathered all my resolve and moved into a somewhat less uncomfortable position.

"The others?" I mumbled loud enough for the boy in the cage next to me to hear.

"Not here."

I felt lost without them. All of them. I needed to be able to know that I was there for them, that I could do my best to protect them. I was failing them by denying them that much. I was failing myself.

I closed my eyes and leaned back, the cold metal bars digging into my back. I didn't even notice, really. I closed my eyes and allowed heavy, gritty tears to fall. Normally I would've been comforted by the others. I would've had their arms to hold me and their reassurances to help me. But the dark-haired one was lying with his eyes closed, out of reach and out of sight, and the other ones were nowhere to be found. Not that we could exactly search for them.

So instead, I imagined they were there. I tried to conjure up a vivid enough image of them, a vivid enough memory of the warmth of their skin on mine.

I pretended they were holding me, we were holding each other, in a grassy field, under the big blue expanse above. I pretended there was a warm breeze, somehow still soft in the crisp, fresh air. I pretended we were all together, and we were all okay, away from the whitecoats and away from the pain and sadness. I pretended we were telling stories, and smiling, and laughing, and the baby was there too.

I pretended that none of it mattered, nothing mattered, and there was no past or future.

My fantasies were interrupted by the arrival of two whitecoats, who appeared to be carrying the blond boy. For one fleeting moment of hope, I thought they might be putting him in my cage, but I realized my cage was already way too cramped for me alone. The whitecoats dumped him in the cage on the other side of me.

After the whitecoats left, I called out to him, but he didn't respond. He was asleep, like I had been. I wondered passively if the others had been through the same experimentation I had.

From the sweat and flush on the blond one's face, it looked like he had.

I sighed and tried to disappear back into my daydream. It wasn't as helpful and reassuring as it had been before, though. It seemed more distant.

A while after, the whitecoats brought in the baby, who they put in the cage on the other side of the blond one's.

After about half an hour of feeling useless – it could've been more, could've been less, there wasn't really any way to tell – silent tears began to fall again, stinging my cheek as they passed. I don't know how long it was that I lay slumped against the back of my cage that way until I fell asleep.

**Don't forget about the little purple bluish button in the bottom left hand corner whose color nobody seems to be able to agree on!! Anyone who reviews gets a virtual cookie!! _Mmmmm... I can virtually smell it... _get it? Virtually? Like _almost, _and then also... nevermind.**


	6. Names

**Disclaimer: Not mine. JP's.**

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**I know. I... am not even gonna try to defend myself. Just... stuff happened. Um, yeah. A combination of very little time and me being lazy. Um, very lazy. So... sorry. Yeah. I'll try to be better in the future and not neglect my fanfics anymore. Um. Anyway. Here's the next chapter.**

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Ch. 5 - Names

Time passed. I don't know how much time. Could've been days, could've been months. All the white, everywhere, and the incessant buzzing of fluorescent lights. Time kind of squishes together in that kind of setting. Or not. That's the problem - you can't tell. Anyway, after a while, I realized we had a choice.

We could either give in. Agree to their testing. Receive less punishment. Submit.

Or not.

Me? Everything I did was centered around one of three things. Myself. My friends. Or getting back to the outdoors, like that one day with Jeb. So I decided to do everything necessary, make all the possible preparations, for that one day. The day we left here. And one thing that became evident to me was how much easier it was for one of my friends to get my attention than it was to get one of theirs. Though it seemed like a small thing, having a name made a difference.

"Hey," I said to the dark-haired boy that one day. (Or night. There was no way to tell.) His body didn't move an inch, but his eyes raised to meet mine. "You need a name," I told him. "All of us. We all need names."

"You have one," he pointed out.

"I know. But you don't. The rest of you don't. You should pick one."

"You pick one."

"For you?" I asked. He nodded. This agitated me - I wanted him to choose something that he felt would suit him. That made sense for who he was. I couldn't make that kind of a choice for him. I didn't know. "No. You have to decide. You're the best judge of who you are. And who you should be." He just stared at me, not saying anything, and I sighed. "Well, what are you best at?" I asked.

"Fighting," he answered after a moment's pause.

"So call yourself something related to that," I said. Another pause.

"Fang."

"_Fang? _Why _Fang_?"

"I bite hard. It keeps them away."

"Um, okay," I said. "Fang it is." I cleared my throat and spoke louder so everyone else could hear. "Um, guys? He is Fang. His name. Because he bites."

"Fang?" asked the light-haired one.

"Yeah. And you need to pick a name too. For you. Something you're good at. Or you like to do."

"I like fire," he said.

"So you're gonna call yourself fire?" I asked, and he frowned.

"No..." he trailed off. "That's too boring. I'll be... I'll be Ignite."

"_Ignite_?" Fang asked a bit skeptically.

"Yeah," Ignite answered proudly, and the little girl looked up and grinned.

"Ig-gy!" she squealed, and the excitement in her voice made it impossible for me not to smile. "Ig-gy!"

"Iggy," said Fang, and I could detect a smile around the corners of his face, and I could feel myself beginning to smile as well.

"No!" Ignite, or Iggy insisted. "No! I'm not gonna be called... Iggy... Ignite. I'll be Ignite."

"Ig-gy! Ig-gy!" the girl continued, before beginning a constant stream of babble.

"Iggy," I murmured, more to myself than anyone else. "It suits you. I like it."

"Whatever," he muttered. "Iggy... will work."

"Ig-gy id ga boo name Ig Ig-gy Ig-y Ig-gy," she said, getting louder with every syllable.

"Nudge her," I told Iggy, who did.

"Nudge - her - nudge - her - nudge - her..." she continued.

"So, uh, what should we call her?" I asked over the noise.

"Nudge - her - nudge - _her - nudge - her - nudge_ -"

"How about Nudge?" suggested Iggy, and I laughed once.

"Nudge seems good. She seems to like it."

"Nudge- Nudge - _Nudge - Nudge - NUDGE," _ she yelled.

"Good." I said, satisfied. "Max. Fang. Iggy. Nudge." And even though these names were just a small detail, it gave me, at least, more of a sense of identity. I felt like a person, not an experiment. And only then did I really begin to understand how bad, how sick, how wrong our lives and the things that happened to us were.

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	7. Gasman

**Disclaimer: Not mine. JP's.**

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**I know. It's been completely unacceptable how long I've gone without updating. What, three months? Not good. I've been SO busy. School was really piling on. Other extracurricular stuff. I've had pretty much NO time to write. But, I found time. Eventually. So, SORRY, and here's the chapter. Please review!!!! And be harsh. Harshness is good. All your recommendations and stuff have been noted and will be used. So, thanks to all reviewers. And NOW here's the chapter. **

**-Max**

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Ch. 6 - Gasman

A whole lot of time went by. I don't know where it happened, or when it happened, even as it was happening. But even though nothing seemed to be happening, I could remember back to when it was different. I could remember Fang, Iggy, and Nudge as shorter and rounder. I could remember my hands smaller and thicker and softer. I didn't notice anything happening until it had already happened.

All I knew was that when I was asleep, it was good. There was no pain. I also knew that when I was asleep I missed it. I didn't notice when sleep was happening. I only knew before and after it happened. I always wished I could experience sleep. _Really _experience it. Consciously. I wondered what it would be like. Dark or light? Rough or soft? Open or confined? I didn't know.

What I _did _know were the tests. The days that seemed to go on and on, the days that seemed to breeze by. The monotony of it all. Even pain grew old. It didn't mean as much anymore, and as a result, the experiments became more intense, more damaging, more inhumane. Did that make me stronger or weaker? I could never decide.

I noticed that we – Fang, Iggy, Nudge, and I – were the only ones that stayed in our white, cell-filled room. It was always filled with other people and things, but they all eventually were taken away. Even the wolf-men that sometimes escorted us around the building and sometimes attacked us for no particular reason didn't last. I eventually came to recognize some of them, and then I wouldn't see them again.

One day, the whitecoats wheeled in a cage with another creature in it. This was not unusual. What _was _unusual was that the infant boy inside was like just like me. He had wings. They were a soft brown with white spots, his hair was blond, and his eyes were bright blue. They placed his cart next to Iggy's, and then they left.

Fang, Iggy, Nudge, and I looked around at each other for a moment, unsure of what to do.

Then, the room was filled with a horrible, horrible smell.

At first I thought this was another test. They've never done tests on us in our cage-filled room, so I found this unlikely. I think I might've made some kind of noise, and Nudge sort of grunted.

I looked over at the infant boy, who grinned and giggled.

"Was that _him_?" I asked.

"Yeah. It was. Definitely," answered Iggy, who was leaning as far away from the boy as he could.

"Should we call him something?" I asked dubiously.

"Sure. How 'bout Gasman?" Iggy suggested. I laughed.

"Works for me. Work for you?" I asked Fang, who had been silently watching the conversation. He nodded, and our eyes met. Mine were friendly. His face was solemn, but I could tell from the glint in his eyes that he was amused. "Gasman it is, then," I said.

After a moment, I asked, "Do you think he's gonna stay?" A pause.

"I don't know," said Fang so quietly I could barely hear him. I thought about this, then spoke.

"Do you think _we're _gonna stay?"

Nobody answered this time. I didn't know what to make of it. Didn't know what to make of anything. I gave the new boy – Gasman – one last look. His face was bright, open. We had changed so much. I smiled sadly, closed my eyes, and went to sleep.


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